the situation in the middle east and north africa rests on shaky ground as does american relations with the region and now we're learning more about what led up to the death of ambassador stevens and three other americans and look at some of the repercussions coming up. iranians u.s. lawmakers and former senior officials demanded listed secretary clinton for democracy and freedom in iraq do you list i make a wish granted the u.s.

state department is taking its first steps to remove one iranian exile group from its terrorist list ahead a look at the political implications of this decision. and the army came might be finally escaping the international terror list but back home american citizens are being targeted as terrorists but with all the allegations of entrapment is the f.b.i. catching criminals or creating them. good evening it's monday september twenty fourth eight pm in washington d.c. my name is christine and you're watching our t.v. . let's begin with a closer look at the attack in benghazi that killed four americans including the u.s. ambassador and this is become part of a much larger arab fall taking place all around the region.

well it turns out the fallout from all of this especially what happened in libya has been detrimental when it comes to building up american intelligence efforts in the recent region the new york times reports that of the more than twenty four u.s. personnel evacuated from the area about half of them were cia operatives and and contractors so these are people whose job it was to collect information and intelligence in the area now were moved speaking anonymously a u.s. official who spent quite a bit of time in libya told the new york times quote it's a catastrophic intelligence loss we've got our eyes poked out now is also becoming more and more clear that the u.s. state department did not even take the time to secure the area or investigate too deeply afterwards since after all a c.n.n. crew actually found ambassador stevens' personal journal c.n.n. reported some of the information inside the journal once it was cross confirmed and then of getting scolded by the u.s. state department which said quote given the truth of how this was handled c.n.n.

patting themselves on the back is disgusting but they're not owning up to is reading and transcribing chris's diary well before bothering to tell the family or anyone else that they took it from the site of the attack. now this has turned in some ways into a bitter battle between the state department and several journalists who believe that the department of state is blaming c.n.n. to detract from its own culpability not having enough security on the ground not securing the site after the attacks that c.n.n. did respond they said quote we think the public had a right to know what c.n.n. has learned from multiple sources about the fears and warnings of a terror threat before the benghazi attack which are now raising questions about why the state department didn't do more to protect ambassador stevens and other u.s. personnel perhaps the real question here is why the state department is now attacking the messenger. while it is an important question when giving way to more bigger questions about who knew what and when and how to proceed from this point. so let's

talk now about a pretty significant action taken by the u.s. state department to remove the group mujahedeen ecologists from the u.s. government's terrorist list it's a group many americans have now heard of though most know it as the any cake because of the frequently played commercials the group has sponsored that air on most cable networks any k. is a ranch democratic opposition working for a nuclear free iran founded on human rights unjustly listed a terrorist group and became is the victim of your life radical regime and their iraqi allies you're opposed to listed m e k and in two thousand and ten a us court order to review iranians u.s. lawmakers and former senior officials demanded listing secretary clinton for democracy and freedom in iran d. list let me k. . so the m.k. and the dozens of americans who have gone to bat for them have now gotten their wish but this isn't quite as simple as you know a peaceful group wrongly put on

a list of evil terrorists there's a mystery here i want to be part of a document put forth by the bush administration in making the case for war with iraq this is from back in two thousand and two now the section of this is titled quote saddam hussein's support for international terrorism that says iraq shelters terrorist groups including this group the mujahedeen economic organization which has used terrorist violence against iran and in the one nine hundred seventy s. was responsible for killing several u.s. military personnel and u.s. civilians so on this page is just one of six bullet points in this list of saddam's terror related activities a list that helped make the case for war and a decade later i guess things have changed immensely well to talk more about why this is the case i was joined by jamal the policy director of the national iranian american council. my my words asian worked to make sure that this wasn't the delisting decision wasn't the result of a politicized process in which a designated terrorist organization uses money lobbying p.r.

to pressure it's way off of the terrorist list i think of in the day this shows that the campaign that the m.e. k. mart on worked and that paying people like rudy giuliani and howard dean to pressure the state department to take this group off the list and it up working and it creates a really dangerous precedent for other organizations that are dangerous to u.s. interests and undermine frankly our policy regarding resolving the dispute with iran peacefully i mean you mentioned rudy giuliani and others it's not just former politicians and people who had a former role we're talking about current lawmakers ileana roslin and the chairman of the house foreign relations committee she has apparently accepted at least twenty thousand dollars in donations from iranian american groups or their leaders that went into sort of her you know political campaign war chest that's according to the center for responsive politics and. you know she's been outspoken about the

need to delist and u.k. and to protect when they were living many of the members were living at camp i just wanna play a little bit of what she said the safety of the residents of camp ashraf is a pretty it's in jeopardy right here right now right this moment it will be in jeopardy until the international community says this is unacceptable this cannot happen. so jamal why do you think so many former and current. people involved in politics accepted money and sort of now go to bat for this group you know as we saw with the remarks by congressman ross leighton and there was this frankly this red herring about the situation and there is any case base inside of iraq and when the united states went in there and toppled saddam instead of dealing with this organization as it should have been dealt with which is first and foremost as a terrorist organization but second as a cult as the state department has said time and time again this is

a cold in which people have been imprisoned in iraq instead of dealing with it that way and maybe separating some of the prisoners there from the cult leaders and dealing with it like that donald rumsfeld said let's hang on to these guys let's see if we can keep them there we'll protect them and sort of kick the can down the road they could be useful against iran some day but i'm not what we're hearing from a lot of people who support the m. a k. and wanted to see them to let us in we're hearing first of all the m.k. wants to see the iranian government toppled and in essentially in a lot of ways so does the u.s. government so you have this sort of enemy of the enemy is our friend kind of thing you also have people saying you know even if you don't like them they haven't done anything sort of terrorist related any time recently so what's your argument to that well the fact of the matter is u.s. officials and i wouldn't characterize the u.s. government as supporting this group there are certainly members of congress who do there are members of the administration who strongly oppose the organization but

u.s. officials went public they went to n.b.c. and said i mean working with saud to conduct assassinations inside of iran so there is clearly at least reportedly still a paramilitary aspect to this group and they are committed to advancing their political agenda by using violence the problem here is that first of all the iranian people don't view it as a legitimate group this is a group that has lost all credibility the iranian people aren't. detest the iranian regime but even the only group less popular than you know the supreme leader and the regime is the m e k and now there is this appearance that the united states is going to be behind that group and you can be sure that the iranian regime is going to use that to undermine the credibility of the united states as well as to undermine the credibility of legitimate pro-democracy and pro-human rights forces inside of iran to basically label them as being somehow affiliated with the k. which is now somehow affiliated with the united states i think that's

a really important point to make and we've certainly been traveling down this path for years and even decades now of trying to figure out the u.s. government has been trying to figure out what to do about iran certainly we've heard from countries like israel from certain people in our own congress that the only answer has to do with you know taking military action but you know president obama that didn't seem to be his first choice does this sort of backing of the delisting it does this sort of eliminate any chances there were if there weren't chances to negotiate more diplomatically i think there could be no mistake that this campaign was a campaign to make war more likely this was part of the push for war when you have negotiations between the u.s. and iran the number one hurdle from the iranian side is this perception that the united states doesn't actually want to negotiate a resolution to the nuclear issue that this is about regime change just like on our side our number one concern is we can't trust the iranians that they don't want to

nuclear weapons this adds fuel to the fire inside of iran that this is really about regime change the united states is not going to accept any kind of diplomatic resolution would have that's the take you're saying inside of iran but do you think that the take inside the u.s. government inside the u.s. government this makes it a lot more difficult to negotiate with the iranians because we've now taken this group off the list and here's the thing if these guys could. pressure. they're way off the terrorist list so they could pour millions of dollars into the top lobbying firms in the united states pay the top officials like giuliani like bolton like dean to speak out on their behalf and basically manufacture this campaign to achieve their political agenda here imagine what they're going to do now that the any case off the list and you have all this money that we don't know where it's coming from is swirling around and the next push is we need war with iraq so all of these politicians in the u.s. we're talking you know former pennsylvania governor ed rendell a democrat who's an m s n b c contributor we're talking as you said giuliani we're

talking tom ridge the former homeland security secretary under george w. bush is it just about money are they they just being paid a ridiculous amount of money or is there something else i mean i can't imagine that you know al qaeda could come in and pay any amount of money to u.s. politicians to get their way don't you think that they really truly believe that any k. has been wrongfully characterized as terrorists i think that there are some people on that list who don't didn't know any better you have president obama's former national security advisor basically said he didn't know what the group was he just saw that they were opposed the iranian regime so he said hey you know free flight a free meal and twenty thousand dollars to advocate for this group that's fine by me but you have other people like for instance dana rohrbacher in the house or. who have said they actually support this group because they're willing to use violence rudy giuliani after it came out that the mccain may be behind some of the terrorist

attacks inside of iran so they deserve a congressional medal of freedom for what they were doing and that this is actually the reason that the in the case should be supported not any of the red herrings about you know human rights in which we would be actually fueling the human rights crisis crisis within these camps what do you think by being taken off this list this means as you said no longer is it for been is it illegal for u.s. citizens to give you know. support to any k. they can get all the advice they want and now they can give all the money they want what's the long term effect of this i think that the first thing we need to watch out for is that the congress is going to some of their supporters in congress are going to make a push to actually fund this group and actually have u.s. money funneled to this group as a means to destabilize and commit attacks inside of iran i wouldn't doubt that there is legislation actually being drafted as we speak that would do just that that's great and what about you know if they got their way if the regime was indeed

toppled what would that mean for any case leadership role in iraq well i mean has a long history of very quick saudi strange ambitions and i don't think that there's any chance that that organization is going to successfully topple the government the fact of the matter is you know the only way for change in iran is for the people of iran to be involved in it and they are not fans of the emmy kay but that does speak to what the ambition here is the ambition for the any case is not about human rights or peace in diplomacy the ambition is to install the leadership of the m e k as the new dictators of iran and to run iran the same way that they run their their camps which human rights watch the rand corporation have all documented very well how undemocratic how cult like and how abusive to fundamental human rights has been towards their own members fascinating stuff something i think a lot of people are just kind of starting to take notice of appreciate you having you on the show i just policy director of the national iranian american council

thanks as always thank you. let's turn out of the case of two young men who allegedly plotted a terrorist attack outside of a bar in chicago a week and a half ago it turns out that plot was mostly put together by the f.b.i. and involved if a car bomb and detonator the two men reportedly encourage for months and months by undercover agents who eventually supplied them with a fake bomb while when the day came just one of those men was still involved the other decided not to take part after being scolded by a local sheikh but a ten year old adel dodd who was just seventeen when the f.b.i. first contacted him now faces life in prison for punching the trigger of the fake bomb to talk more about this case and the thin line between entrapment and good police work i was joined by trevor aaronson the author of the terror factory write this is a pretty amazing case but it's actually not the first time that the f.b.i. . pursued a target who is less than eighteen or younger than eighteen and in this case that

the other one they pursued in the story became came of age and then brought him along and. was particularly credible about this case in particular that as you said a religious leader crumpled one of the members to not move forward in the plot but then the f.b.i. undercover agents pull the other member who did before i know the shape and he said . you know it's ok with files that you should move forward and this is really the first time that the f.b.i. if you islam in you know pushing a. target forward in a plot yeah it's really interesting and in some ways this story out of chicago seems to turn the popular idea of terrorism on its head i mean the f.b.i. getting muslim youth involved in jihad well as sheik tells the youth to remain peaceful in your research which is more common. it's actually much more common for the f.b.i. or the climbers there's really little evidence suggests that there is much of a terrorist arc but within the muslim community you know we looked at hundreds of cases of an eleven and in the last decade there been fifty cases where. someone who

was on the fringes of society was espousing unpopular or even violent beliefs but really had no capacity to commit violence on their own and it was the f.b.i. undercover agent or the informant who provided the means to the targets that hey here's a bomb is the but for this plot we can make it happen but in all of these cases they never had the confessed it was a crime on their own yeah let's backtrack just a little bit because we should mention the eighteen year old involved who was arrested seventeen at the time when he was confident he was contacted because he was espousing some of these these beliefs saying some pretty harsh stuff about jihad on the internet so this isn't somebody who was who was randomly grabbed this is somebody was contacted by the f.b.i. because they thought that some of the stuff he said was threatening but what you're saying is that there was never the capability to be able to carry this out how do you suggest you know how do people that you've spoken to suggest that police deal

with these kind of things that are on the internet certainly the answer is not to ignore them. this is a difficult question i mean obviously from the f.b.i.'s perspective and when i talk about this they say hey you know what are we supposed to do here is someone who says they want to been violent or we just go through ignore them and you know think so much or out of it and i think that's something we can all empathize with i mean you don't want to be the f.b.i. agent to know we should ignore this guy and he actually does end up obtaining weapons and launching forward with an attack but with defense attorneys these men who are part of these things day is that you know in almost all of these cases had they been counseled rather than encouraged they probably never would have moved forward so and we actually see that in this case you know and in this case a religious leader said to one of them you know islam does not condone this and you should stop it then in fact he did but the other one was actually encouraged by the f.b.i. and the board and i think we can kind of draw a conclusion that you know there are going to be cases where it's up to them and men on the fringes are willing to move forward and plus but in this case one was

counseled out of it and the other moved forward because he was instigated by the f.b.i. well talk about how these kind of things these kind of arrests make the muslim community feel about the f.b.i. i mean i do think it creates more attention and distrust to have this going on absolutely you know the council on american islamic relations no longer has a relationship with the f.b.i. in part because of these aggressive type of sting operation and what this ultimately creates the violence thing you know muslims who may be aware of someone in their community who may be interested in some sort of violence are going to be hesitant to go to the f.b.i. to report this person because they don't want to be caught up in a sting they don't want to be recruited as an informant and they're really it has become this adversarial relationship between muslim communities across the country and the f.b.i. and what we're seeing is that most of the information coming to the f.b.i. about the muslim community is coming from paid informants informants who are criminals and there's a real question about the quality of the information you know whether they're bringing in people like bill who was on the fringe and may have never committed

a crime but because there is such pressure to bring in. you know someone like that may be targeted. yes certainly hear it r t we have reported on a few different cases of you know f.b.i. agents going undercover inside of mosques and actually being reported by some of the people who would send them off saying this guy's acting weird and it turned out it was an undercover agent you know maybe trying to stir things up a little too much so it's really interesting let's talk about abdel die. he has been arrested he could face life in prison talk a little bit about the severity of the charges of the possible sentencing and of this case and of entrapment really overall. you know when you look at previous cases like this almost all of them end up pleading guilty because the prosecutor the department of justice at this point has a near perfect record of prosecution and terrorism stings juries for the most part has been unwilling to you know express enough empathy to move toward any kind of

entrapment defense and at the same time because of mandatory minimum sentences you know men who go to trial are looking at a minimum of thirty five years in prison so you know someone like i will tell you it may choose to take a plea to save himself from the minimum thirty five years in prison and that's what we've seen a lot of cases like this where they end up leading out and getting and fifteen years but in some cases you know there's a really good case that's coming up in oregon in january with many mammadov in a homicide and his case goes forward in january and they are arguing entrapment and it's a very similar case to this one the f.b.i. provided all of the means necessary for the senate to move forward in the plot so you're saying this case in oregon the f.b.i. could actually be held responsible held accountable for pushing this forward every indication is that the legal team in portland is going to pursue an entrapment defense is going to put on trial the f.b.i. informant programs that say you know these aren't real terrorists these men were manufactured through the very aggressive work of f.b.i. informants an f.b.i. agent how common though is it to have a for the f.b.i.

for these undercover agents to be held responsible or for that matter for these types of plots to change it seems like we've heard so many stories of you know entrapment being sort of the method that's use time and time again what's the way to sort of turn this around or suggest a better method. you know really at this point it requires public outrage for any kind of change in the i mean to the federal investigation of the very slow moving slow changing bureaucracy and at this point you know the for the most part the federal you know the. public has not been outraged by the and i think they should i mean these are cases where the men never had any capacity to commit their crimes and it's only because the f.b.i. made that possible and i would encourage viewers you know when they hear about terrorist plots you know and they read about them the first thing they should look at it like was there an informant involved were the defendant actually ever in contact with actual terrorist with al qaeda and in most of these cases that's not the case you know so many time bomb plots you think of and you know you think of

all terrorists these terrorist cases over the last decade most of those are actually f.b.i. terrorism it's certainly hard to have outrage when you're sold the story that it was a an amazing terror plot uncovered and that's the only line that's given in the details become a little murky after that great to have you on the show trevor aaronson author of the book the terror factory thanks so much thank you well for the last few years there's been quite a bit of evidence that detainees at guantanamo bay have been involuntary drugged with powerful anti-psychotics and in the last few weeks the case of david hicks an australian how they get now is bringing more and more attention to this issue also bringing forth questions about the purpose of this the long term effects and the legality well it appears the department of defense is now trying to cover up some of these charges of drugging as suggested in a deal days inspector general report scott horton is a contributing editor at harper's magazine he's covered guantanamo bay for years and he joined me earlier from new york city. the big picture is whether it's

consistent with the geneva conventions and other international instruments and we know that the bush administration originally set up the guantanamo bay facility with the expectation that it would be beyond the reach of laws and courts that it expected that the geneva conventions and other internet national convention since simply wouldn't apply to what was done there and this attitude seems to have inspired some medical experimentation because i think that's what we see evidence of here we see the use of psychotropic drugs and other drugs for purposes that really don't have anything to do with health and safety of the prisoners now i think the authorities certainly could they could take that vaccinate prisoners if they're sick they could give them medicines to address the situation if they're making a ruckus they could be given seven tips and things of that sort so there are certain circumstances in which drugs can be used but if we look in detail into these

reports we see drugs being used that don't match those circumstance where the i mean some of these drugs that we're hearing about they have the ability to cause you know increase in heart rate to cause blurred vision and also to cause hallucinations so it's very confusing i think if you're trying to get intelligence you know accurate intelligence how these mind altering drugs would help. well it seems that these drugs were probably used in the preparatory stage so they are they're trying to prepare a prisoner to be interrogated they want to break the prisoner they want to free him up loosen him up to speak freely in the now declassified guantanamo medical standard operating procedure description lays out how the drug go below scopolamine i think it's called was administered to all get get mowed detainees this is a drug often referred to as the quote truth drug how did they come to this

designation. well that's where it is also been used for motion sickness and other things but the military in fact stopped using it for that purpose because of side effects. and we know that the intelligence community was experimenting with the drug for some period of time potentially including just in the last few years as a sort of truth serum. so i think you know that's this is another area where we have a question clearly being presented and we have answers coming back from the department defense that really aren't satisfactory dition to what happens with the defense department want to know we also have the cia using drugs in fact sometimes many of the same drugs and we know that from criminal investigations that went on overseas so for instance with a man a german citizen a car we don't masri who was held by the cia in afghanistan when he was released he was examined by criminal authorities in mexico including their doctors and they

concluded that he had been drugged with use of psychotropic drugs so i think we see a pattern that emerges there as well and that's a really sad story i know you covered that a couple years ago because from all signs point to the fact that he was a case of mistaken identity and even once that was realized they kept him there for quote knowing too much so i mean it's really crazy to think that this can go on and i do want to talk also about the cover up a recent report with put out in response to a freedom of information request and then fully says it found nothing i can find no evidence to substantiate allegations that mind altering drugs were administered to detainees. so we do we've seen evidence come out in certain cases especially straight from the horse's mouth from people who have been at guantanamo bay and say yes i was given a needle i was drugged and now there's this you know inspector general's report that says no we actually don't know of any of that happening so what's going on

here. the inspector general report in this case is extremely suspicious because i think it lays out a sort of base of it from an asian and then it refuses or fails to draw obvious logical conclusions from the information that it presents but i think you can understand that the limit well let's just assume that the use of these psychotropic drugs have been approved by the government that there is level and based on documents that we've seen come out of department of justice department defense we know all these issues were to take can essentially to the top to the white house ultimately for review and approval and let's say the use of these drugs was in fact approved and that's also based on legal advice that the geneva conventions and other international agreements to in the party what they did apply then the use of these techniques would constitute a grave violation of the geneva conventions that is to say a war crime if i got something where the united states insisted adamantly on prosecutions at the end of world war two and the korean war so you've got

a department defense inspector general who i would submit to does not want to put together the prosecutor's playbook for air so the report just suddenly goes silent that he junctures and that was scott horton a contributing editor at harper's magazine. and now we want to raise the new the bound those u.s. marines alleged to have your unaided on the corpses of taliban fighters and then posed with the bodies in a video that happened in july of last year at two of those marine staff sergeant joseph w. chamberlain and staff sergeant edward w. deployed death to laurie now facing criminal charges and will be forced to face a court martial over the incident that's according to the pentagon charges against the sergeant alleged quote violations of the uniform code of military justice for their involvement in your native on deceased taliban fighters and for posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties and you might remember this earlier this year when footage of the incident.